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Materials Research: New Findings on the Hall Effect

IFF-News February 22, 2010

As part of an international cooperation, researchers at IFF have discovered a decisive reason for the strength of the so-called Hall effect in iron alloys. Their findings will in future assist the targeted development of new and improved sensors.

The Hall effect is used in sensors to measure magnetic fields and electric currents or for position detection, for example in car gearboxes. The material-dependent strength of the Hall effect is a decisive factor for the sensitivity of the resulting sensors.

The scientists discovered that an iron-platinum alloy displays a much stronger Hall effect than an iron-palladium alloy. They clearly identified the reason for this surprising discovery as the spin-orbit interaction of the electrons by combining experimental studies with calculations on the Jülich supercomputers. The results have been published in the current issue of the scientific journal "Physical Review Letters".